As the title suggests, the amount of older women who either don’t see anything wrong with sexual harassment or assault, downplay its seriousness or engage in victim blaming is extremely saddening. I’ve copied part of this from a reply I gave to another post.
I was sexually harassed by an old guy in front of his wife and my mum who didn’t say a word, I’m visually impaired and he partly did it under the guise of helping me, went on for over 1hr and the only comment from his wife was laughingly telling him to knock it off. Around 30mins of that time was spent sat with his hand on my knee, with him regularly referring to my age which knowing he was over 40yrs older than me was creepy af, I would of left if I could of and I offered worry about ever being alone with a guy like that because if I was in an unfamiliar area I’d be dependent on them to get around and I’d be helpless without my cane anywhere. It shook my confidence and means I’m aware it’s completely unsafe for me to go out alone.
The worst thing about it was my mum and his wife doing nothing about it, they could see him whispering stuff down my ear and him having his arm round my waist for what felt like an eternity but probably was no more than 20 minutes, and they said nothing except for laughing it off.
We’ve been conditioned to accept sexual harassment and assault as just a part of life sadly, and older women are the worst for it.